Nine Years Since Your Last Check-Up? Read This Before You Book
The long gap is the most ordinary thing we see, and it is almost never the disaster people have built it into. Here is what actually happens when you finally come back — and what it costs.
The gap is not the problem you think it is
Roughly a third of the people who register with us haven’t seen a dentist in more than five years. A good number are past ten. Almost every one of them opens with a version of the same sentence — “I know, I know, it’s been ages” — said in the tone you’d use to confess to a crime.
Here is what we actually think when we hear it: nothing. It is Tuesday. You are the fourth person today.
What matters clinically is not the length of the gap. It is what has been happening inside your mouth during it, and that is a question with an answer, which is a much better position to be in than not knowing.
Is the thing stopping you the dentistry — or is it the anticipated telling-off?
What people are actually avoiding
When we ask, the answer is almost never the drill. It splits three ways, and only one of them is about pain.
The middle number is the one worth sitting with. Most people are not frightened of dentistry. They are frightened of being told off by a stranger while lying down with their mouth open — a position that makes it impossible to defend yourself.
We took that seriously enough to make it a rule rather than a promise.
Waiting until it hurts
Toothache is a late symptom. Decay is painless for a long time, and gum disease is painless for longer — by the time something aches, the cheap version of the fix has usually passed. The people who wait for pain don’t avoid treatment; they swap a £145 filling for a £690 root canal.
Come in while nothing hurts, on a day you chose, in a mood you control. A first visit is an examination and a conversation — nothing is treated on day one unless you ask for it.
What the first appointment is actually like
Forty-five minutes, most of it sitting upright and talking.
Your first forty-five minutes
- The chat first. Upright, clothed, nothing in your mouth. What brought you in, what you’ve been avoiding, what you want out of this.
- The look around. Teeth, gums, bite, and a soft-tissue check of tongue, cheeks and neck — the part nobody mentions and everybody should have.
- Photographs, and X-rays only if there’s a question they can answer. We say what the question is before we take them.
- The screen turns round. You see what we see, at proper size, and you get to ask the obvious things without anyone sighing.
- The plan, written down and priced. You take it home. Nobody rings you about it afterwards unless you’ve asked us to.
One honest caveat If you arrive in pain, this isn’t the appointment you want — that’s an emergency slot, £85, and we hold them back every morning. Ring before 9:30 and say the word.
The things you’re allowed to ask for
None of these need justifying, and none of them cost extra.
Before you sit down
- A longer appointment — twenty extra minutes, free, just ask when you book
- A talk-only visit first — sit in the room, ask everything, no examination, no charge
- Someone with you in the room
- Headphones on, playing whatever you like, loud
- The raised hand — it stops the appointment, not just the moment
The raised hand is the one people underuse. It is not a signal for “wait a second”. Put your hand up and we stop, sit you up, and you decide whether we carry on. Nobody here has ever been annoyed by it, and it costs us nothing but the rest of a slot we’ve already been paid for.
What it will cost you to find out
A first visit is £59 and includes any X-rays we take. You leave with an itemised, written quote for whatever needs doing, and that quote is fixed — if we misjudged the work, that is ours to absorb.
If the answer is nothing needs doing yet, that is a perfectly common answer and you will hear it in plain words. Roughly one long-gap patient in five needs no treatment at all. Teeth are more forgiving than guilt is.
Nine years is not a story we haven't heard
Read the first visit described minute by minute — what it costs, what you can decline, and what we won’t do to you on day one. Then book when you’re ready, not before.
- Northlight Dental Co. new-patient registrations, rolling 12 months (internal)
- Treatments and price bands
- New patients — your first visit